Factors affecting performance in the Triathlon

The most important factor is the previous training and the structuring of this for the final result, but there are other factors that we can not choose or control

 

 

Our collaborator Personal Runnig, has carried out an analysis of the different factors that affect the performance in triathlon.

This analysis starts from the factors that make the final difference in this sport, such as the edad, sex and its changes in each discipline with respect to the times reached in the global competition.

We affirm that the most determining factor is the previous training and the structuring of this for the final result, but other factors that we can not choose and control affect this limiting it if you are a woman and with the entry in years, something totally logical and impossible to avoid given the physiological changes that the body is suffering in its different stages.

Sex and age they are, clearly, the main culprits of the sport performance attending to the differences between men and women, reaching them some lesser times in the disciplines of Olympic Triathlon, Half Ironman and Ironman.

Men reach their highest performance in ages between 18-39 years while women do it in 25-39 and the descent of it becomes more noticeable in them from the 55 years (1), from this we conclude that men, globally speaking, will reach “higher” in terms of marks than them, also having in their favor physiological factors such as a higher maximum oxygen consumption and amount of hemoglobin in the blood.

The smallest differences in performance are found at the age of the 30-35 years between sexes, where the results are equal.

Age in relation to the 3 disciplines It shows a negative evolution with the passage of time, but different depending on the discipline to which we refer.

Cycling is the one that suffers least the passage of time in relation to the race and swimming, because the race is very harmful, it damages the fast fibers more than cycling and the lowering of the lactate threshold and the career economy is greater proportionally than in cycling (2). In general, the discipline that most suffers the increase in age is the race for the aforementioned and other physiological factors.

 

 

Relationship age-sex-performance: if we take a global view of all the factors we deduce that the most noticeable decrease in performance in men and women is in cycling; swimming is where there are less differences between the sexes due to the greater economy and efficiency of women and their physiological characteristics, such as a greater percentage of body fat and smaller size (1) that also favor that the performance in this sector decreases less proportionally than in men; In the race there are no significant data of large variations but we also infer that men will have better values ​​proportionally to women.

The greatest decrease in performance is observed from the 40-45 years, where the final times in competition in both sexes increase exponentially (1); by disciplines in cycling, the sharpest descent occurs from the 70 years and in swimming at the 50.

Bibliography

1. Knechtle B, Rüst CA, Rosemann T, Lepers R. Age and gender differences in half-Ironman triathlon performances – the Ironman 70.3 Switzerland from 2007 to 2010. Open Access Journal of Sports Medicine. 2012; 3: 59-66.

2. Lepers R, Sultana F, Bernard T, Hausswirth C, Brisswalter J. Age-related changes in triathlon performances. Int J Sports Med. 2010; 31 (4): 251-6.

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